“But, When persons are present to one another they can function not merely as physical instruments but also as communicative ones. This possibility, no less than the physical one, is fateful for everyone concerned and in every society appears to come under strict normative regulation, giving rise to a kind of communication traffic order…
(Incidentally, it is in this aspect of public order that most symptoms of mental disorder seem to make themselves felt initially.) The rules pertaining to this area of conduct I shall call situational proprieties.”

Source: 1950s-1960s, Behavior in Public Places, 1963, p. 23; Cited in: Philip Manning, Erving Goffman and Modern Sociology (Stanford University Press, 1992), p. 88.

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Erving Goffman 29
Sociologist, writer, academic 1922–1982

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“The sign is a gesture produced with the intention of communicating, that is, in order to transmit one's representation or inner state to another being.”

[I] Signs, 1.2.2
Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language (1984)
Context: The sign is a gesture produced with the intention of communicating, that is, in order to transmit one's representation or inner state to another being. The existence of a certain rule (a code) enabling both the sender and the addressee to understand the manifestation in the same way must, of course, be presupposed if the transmission is to be successful; in this sense, navy flags, street signs, signboards, trademarks, labels, emblems, coats of arms, and letters are taken to be signs.<!-- Dictionaries and cultivated language must at this point agree and take as signs also words, that is, the elements of verbal language. In all the cases examined here, the relationship between the and that for which it stands seems to be less adventurous than for the first category.

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